Review by New York Times Review
Americans tend to be xenophobic when purchasing books for children. Few translated classics exist, apart from Jean de Brunhoff's "Babar" and Astrid Lindgren's "Pippi Longstocking" series. Few translations ever appear on the New York Times children's best-seller lists. Yet in this age of global interdependence, books that show different ways of looking at experience seem ever more necessary. Three recent titles featuring a bear, though radically different in tone and feeling, allow readers to observe this naturally intriguing creature from distinct cultural points of view - French, American and Dutch. "Bear Despair," by Gaëtan Dorémus, a wordless book first published in France and one of this year's New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books, opens with an endpaper map that showcases all the story's characters (a wolf, a lion, a vulture, an elephant, an octopus and the bear). As the saying goes, "If you snooze, you lose": clutching his teddy bear in slumber, Bear awakes to find his beloved companion snatched by the wolf. In a rage, the bear swallows the offending creature - which can be seen in a cross-section of his stomach - but the wolf has already tossed Teddy someplace else. Next, the lion and the vulture conspire to deprive Bear of his beloved friend. No problem. He swallows the lion and the vulture's eggs. As Bear moves through the story, he grows in size; hence when he has to fight the elephant, he can accommodate it in his stomach. Finally an octopus surrenders the prized object, and Bear regurgitates all his former enemies, the eggs having hatched into fledglings. Using single panels, double-page spreads and four-part action sequences, Dorémus keeps things bouncing along at a very fast clip. The muted colors of red, blue, yellow and green and the cross-hatched line illustrations combine to create a surreal landscape, quite appropriate for the action. Certainly American artists have shown creatures being gobbled by the protagonist - as Jules Feiffer did in "Bark, George." But this bear really devours his enemies; his emotional rage matches that of Max in "Where the Wild Things Are." No lessons and no morals are attached - just a screaming childhood id. The bear wants his teddy and will do anything to get it! The moment readers open "The Bear in the Book," they return to what feels more like the familiar world of American storytelling, in a book first published in the United States - even though both author and illustrator live in France. In American picture books, the art of sharing the space between author and illustrator is highly valued, and Kate Banks and Georg Hallensleben have concocted here a charming pas de deux about a boy and his mother for young children. The book centers on an intimate mother-and-child moment, like a Mary Cassatt painting, as they savor a bedtime story about a bear. As the boy turns the pages, he strokes the pictures, urging the bear to sleep. Banks describes the bear's journey in lilting prose: "'Winter settled like a big hush,' read the boy's mother. 'And the big black bear slept.'" Finally, the boy himself goes to sleep, with a copy of "The Bear in the Book" on his bed. Hallensleben creates characters, landscapes and interior scenes with equal skill. In "The Bear in the Book," readers are in the hands of two masters - Banks with her well-chosen words and Hallensleben with his lush, color-saturated paintings. Certainly the most unusual book of the group, and for that matter, of the thousands of picture books published this year, is "The Island," by the Dutch father-daughter team Marije and Ronald Tolman. For their 2010 book "The Tree House," this talented pair won Italy's prestigious BolognaRagazzi Award. In their new offering, they feature a polar bear on a spiritual quest. I've gone through this wordless tale dozens of times and still can't frame an exact story line. I'm not even sure I know what the book is about - and I really don't care. Like a young girl I saw recently in a bookstore, I just run my hands over each page and say, "This is so beautiful." A polar bear descends from the clouds and stands on an island with a flock of penguins; he journeys from place to place, swimming with dolphins, riding on the back of a hippo and eventually connecting with a violin-playing raccoon. Having found what he was looking for, a companion or art itself, the bear settles down to watch the stars with his friend. The entire story in this oversize book is told in double-page spreads. The natural landscape looms large, and the animals small, in each painting. Cool blues of sky and water verge into sun-drenched reds when African animals appear. An abstract structure, possibly a lighthouse, dominates many of the images. Dodo birds appear, suggesting a thread about the environment or the extinction of species. Each reader will have a different version of what occurs, but the pictures and the bear's journey beg to be returned to again and again. For anyone who wants to develop visual acuity in children, "The Island" provides a springboard for conversation, reminding all ages of the wonder and magnificence of the natural world. And it demonstrates that we don't always need words to support an amazing visual experience. Three different portraits of bears - a sweet hibernator, an angst-ridden combatant and a mystical seeker - emerge in these books. As single volumes they all have virtues. But as a group, they show the infinite range of picture books - the form that William R. Scott once called "the subtlest, most elusive art form of them all." Anita Silvey is the author of "Children's Book-a-Day Almanac" and many books for children.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 25, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The creators of The Great Blue House (2005) and Fox (2007) are as adept as any at presenting the wonders of the natural world to preschoolers. In this cozy and deceptively simple story, a toddler and his mother cuddle up at bedtime to read a favorite picture book about a black bear as it prepares for winter, hibernates in its den, and then emerges in springtime. Banks provides details about hibernation and winter's many changes in both descriptive, child-friendly text and the resulting conversation between adult and child as they make their way through the book. Although the focus of this atmospheric story is seemingly on the big black bear, the book is just as much a celebration of the shared-reading experience, from sitting close and discussing the story to exploring the illustrations to noting the book's sensory features. Hallensleben's rich, impressionistic artwork moves seamlessly between warm domestic scenes of the pair reading and vibrant natural landscapes with plenty of seasonal detail. With its quiet, gentle tone, this is perfect for one-on-one bedtime reading as well as for introducing hibernation, sleep cycles, and seasonal change, but the engaging, double-spread pictures will please crowds, too.--McKulski, Kristen Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In an extraordinary portrait of the tender, meandering, and inquisitive nature of reading together, a boy and his mother read a book about a hibernating bear, turning the pages slowly and commenting on the illustrations-it's clearly an old favorite. " 'Winter settled like a big hush,' read the boy's mother. 'And the big black bear slept.' 'Shh,' said the boy." The illustrations in the bear book intersect with the images of the mother and son, as though readers are reading alongside them; early on, readers peer over their heads, moving closer in subsequent spreads until the two books seem, now and again, to become one. Thickly stroked paintings and warm colors create a sense of richness, while slow pacing contributes to the sleepy atmosphere. As spring approaches and the bear in the book wakes up, the boy grows sleepier. Banks and Hallensleben (whose most recent collaboration was What's Coming for Christmas?) allow readers to share fully in the pleasure of a loving parent-child relationship. This is, quite literally, what reading with a child is all about. Ages 3-6. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-In this deceptively simple bedtime story, a boy snuggles up with his mother to read his favorite book. It is about a bear going to sleep for the winter, and together they look at the pictures and talk about the text. "'Do bears really sleep all winter long?' asked the boy." He turns the page and notices the snow. "'Snow is cold,' he said." His mother reads some more about the sleeping bear, and animals in winter, and children gliding across the ice on a frozen lake. "'I'd like to skate,' said the boy." Page by page, the bear sleeps while life goes on around him, but this book is about much more than that. With great subtlety, this mother and child are modeling the perfect way to share a picture book, cuddling up and allowing time to examine the pictures, talk about the concepts, and point out the known and unknown. Actions in the book within the book are internalized by the boy, demonstrating a fundamental aspect of reading comprehension: "A fox drank from a pond. 'I'm thirsty,' said the little boy." As with previous bedtime books by these fine collaborators, short simple sentences create a tranquil, soothing air, while the lush textured oil paintings fill the pages with dense color. But the most valuable thing about this gem might be that it demonstrates a best practice, to the benefit of children and parents alike.-Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Banks and Hallensleben are together again (What's Coming for Christmas? 2009, etc.) with a heartwarming tale that compares one bear's hibernation to one little boy's bedtime-reading rituals. With a dreamlike quality appropriate to a nightly bedtime story, this captures the feel of falling asleep. Cuddled up against his mama, the boy turns the pages, comments on the colors, asks questions and talks to the bear that is the subject of the book. He hushes the bear, touches his paw, notices the changes in the bear's environment and identifies with the sleeping bear. Hallensleben's paintings, filled with thick brush strokes, abstract backdrops and cold colors for the outside scenes and rich oranges and reds for the mama and son, lull readers along with the boy into that relaxed time between waking and sleeping. "The boy held the book. He listened to the sound the pages made when he turned them back and forth." And, just as the bear's springtime world is turning green and yellow, the little boy slips into the blue world of his own short, one-night hibernation. A tribute to the power of books to connect and the love that parents everywhere show when they share books with children at the end of the day, this picture book is simply spectacular. (Picture book. 3-7)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
